


I Finally Settle the Great Hair Debate!

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon - Enhances original, Canon - Solves frequent reader complaint, Characters - Family Dynamics, Characters - New interpretation, Humor, Multi-Age, Writing - Good use of humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3762623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tolkien scholars have spent enough time arguing about Legolas' hair color - the author presents the only possible answer! (A parody of Tolkien scholarship that contains actual research. Hopefully funny; at least canon and proofread.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Finally Settle the Great Hair Debate!

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

**Author’s note**

The Oropher referred to so often is Legolas’ grandfather  
and Thranduil’s father; High King of the Wood-Elves during the second age  
of the world.

And be warned that if you didn’t know that already, the following is likely  
to be lost on you.

*******

Tolkien scholars have spent more than enough time debating whether Legolas  
is blonde or brunette; so I, the Evil Old Woman, have decided to put a stop  
to it! Therefore I have assembled all the pertinent facts and run them  
through my evil old brain, and come up with the only answer to the hair-  
color question that fits *all* the facts!

Thus in the Canon is it written: In thousands of pages of trilogy,  
appendices thereof, Silmarillion, and ancillary writing The Immortal  
Professor never bothered to mention Legolas’ hair color, but did state that  
all Telerin Elves such as he are all brunette. Yet in “The Hobbit” he  
describes Legolas’ father Thranduil as having “golden hair”! So for years  
fans with sufficient time on their hands have been arguing over the hair  
color of a fictional Elf; and the politer fans have said “Nobody knows”;  
and the less polite say “Brunette, duh!” and rant about Canon errors in  
“The Hobbit”. (“That book calls Elrond an ‘Elf-Friend’ and not a Half-Elf!  
And uses the first draft of the Fall of Doriath! You can’t trust it blah  
blah blah!”)

To which the only reply is: “Bah! Canon is Canon!” If ‘The Hobbit’ says  
Thranduil is blonde, he IS blonde and Legolas could have inherited his  
father’s hair color!

In “The Silmarillion” and the various other posthumous writings The  
Professor went into some detail about Elvish ethnography, saying that of  
all the Eldar only the tribe of the Vanyar are blonde, and they did not  
leave descendants in Middle-Earth; having gone to Valinor well before the  
First Age and stayed there, except for the final battle against Morgoth and  
mopping up afterwards. Therefore the only way the House of Oropher could  
have Vanyarin blood is through intermarriage with the Noldor, but I must  
argue against that possibility.

There was obviously some intermarriage between the Vanyar and the Noldor in  
Valinor, and certainly some of the Noldorin Rebels that came to Middle-  
Earth had Vanyarin blood – such as Galadriel and her brothers, and  
Glorfindel. Could the Mirkwood Royals be descended from a Noldorin exile  
with Vanyarin blood?

I think not. The House of Oropher seems to have its origin in the nobility  
of Doriath, a group who developed strong anti-Noldorin sentiments at the  
first sight of Feanor’s stolen ships and held them as long as there were  
any Noldor available to resent. And who avoided contact with the Noldor  
for long stretches of time during the first and second ages, which was  
probably when Thranduil was born. And Oropher himself seems to have  
particularly disliked the Noldor, so it’s highly unlikely he had Noldorin  
ancestry or would have been willing to marry a Noldorin lady.

But if Legolas and Thranduil can’t be part Noldor or part Vanyar, that  
doesn’t necessarily mean they’re pure Sindarin. Could one or both be part  
wood-elf? After all, there’s at least one blonde wood-elf, that nameless  
border guard of Lorien whose hair “glinted like gold in the morning sun”.  
There’s no reason that Oropher or Thranduil couldn’t have taken a Wood-  
Elven wife (in fact I think the latter more likely than not, the way  
Legolas refers to himself as an Wood-Elf and not a Grey-Elf).

But likely though that is, it couldn’t have been a source of blonde-hair  
genes - Wood-Elves can’t be blonde, either. In the “Unfinished Tales” the  
Wood-Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien are defined as being Nandor; Telerin  
Eldar like the Sindar, Green-Elves of Ossiriand, and Telerin Elves in  
Valinor - and therefore necessarily dark-haired. So the entire population  
of Mirkwood and Lorien *should* be dark-haired, except for Celeborn and  
Galadriel!

Which leaves Thranduil as a whopping big anomaly and his son as an  
unanswerable question. They both must be a full-blooded Telerin Elves, and  
by the professor’s own rules they logically must be brunette, yet Thranduil  
just isn’t…

* * *

So! I’ve been over ALL the facts and only one explanation for the “golden  
hair” seen by Thorin & Co. that fits in with everything the Professor told  
us about the ethnography of the elves, and it’s this:

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The whole House of Oropher dyes their hair blonde. They are of course are  
natural brunettes.

I can see how it all started… (flashback effect)…

* * *

Scene: The Vale of the Anduin, circa S.A. 500. A tall Elf with bleached-  
blonde hair rides in from the west, planning to con the ignorant natives.

Oropher: “I am Ingwe, King of the Vanyar and High King of all the elves!  
I have returned! Bring me all your gold and your most beautiful Elf-  
maidens!”

Nandorin Elves: “Ooooh! Him have golden hair, him be King…”

The scam is so successful that Oropher and his descendants have to spend  
the next 6000 years hiding the peroxide from the servants and pretending  
not to notice that nobodies like that Lorien border guard are bleaching  
too…

* * *

Of course the only piece of evidence I have to back up this theory is that  
Legolas son of Thranduil showed up in a certain recent movie with platinum  
blonde hair and jet-black eyebrows, but it’s undeniably the *only*  
explanation that fits ALL the facts!

So BOW BEFORE ME, Tolkien scholars - for the Evil Old Woman has put Ye all  
to shame by definitively answering a question that has stymied the rest of  
you for fifty-odd years! Find some other impossibility to occupy your  
minds – such as why Cirdan has a beard that’s long when the Immortal  
Professor repeatedly stated that elves can’t grow beards!

*******

**Author’s note**

Ingwe is the King of the Vanyar and is High King of all the  
Elves everywhere. I warned you about having to know Tolkien esoterica to  
get the jokes herein!


End file.
